The Greater Path of Harry Potter
by That Idiot
Summary: Something is hidden inside Harry's family vault, and it will change everything
1. Chapter 1

**Harry Potter and the Greater Path**

_Summer of 1993, Diagon Alley, London, England_

Having spent the last week in Diagon Alley, and by now feeling quite bored during the later parts of the days, a young thirteen year old boy by the name of Harry Potter had just finished reading a book on the history of older wizarding families, amongst them his own. Having read of such things as family vaults and the treasures contained within, Harry made his way to Gringotts, to enquire with the Goblins as to whether or not his family still had such a vault.

Upon entering the bank, he approached the tellers, and made his request. A goblin shortly arrived to guide him once more into the depths of Gringotts, in a roller-coaster ride even more spectacular than riding his Nimbus Two Thousand in the middle of a Quidditch match. The ride lasted much longer than his first one had, but he was still quickly delivered to a vault door. The goblin who had brought him down directed him to place his hand upon the door, and if he was truly a member of the Potter family it would open for him, but he would only be allowed to go inside to look, not remove anything – that would wait for his fifteenth birthday, and he would not be able to gain full control of the vault until he reached his senior majority, at the age of twenty one.

Harry nodded, and placed his hand on the door. A brief pinch later, which had him wince from the unexpected nature of it rather than the pain, and the door swung open. A tapestry hung from the short ceiling, neatly blocking the view of the rest of the vault, and Harry eagerly drank in what was clearly his lineage. It looked like his family had stretched back beyond the birth of Christ, and if some of the names where correct, from the rise of the Roman Empire. He stepped into the vault and past the tapestry, and gaped at the heaped piles of gold, the shelves crammed full of scrolls and books, racks of swords, spears, bows and other weapons and armour, chests filled to the brim with jewellery.

A small pedestal held a couple of tattered books, their bindings cracked with age and use, and a bracer of some dimly shiny metal. Stepping up to the pedestal, Harry grinned when he noticed one had several titles on the front, ranging through a number of languages until it's latest, which simply read "Grimoire of the Potter's". The other book seemed to be a treatise on ancient magical species, while the bracer had some elegantly flowing lines of text and decoration on it, but nothing that Harry recognised from his, admittedly not great, knowledge.

Harry ran his hand over the spell book briefly, before regretfully turning his back on the pedestal, sweeping the vault with one last gaze before he left it, and headed back to the surface. He would spend the rest of the summer at the Leaky Cauldron, exploring the rest of the Alley, content with the knowledge that he would be able to come back on his fifteenth birthday to claim the grimoire, and anything else that caught his eye.

Of course, being the Boy-Who-Lived, things didn't go exactly according to plan...

Some plot bunnies just never die. This one... this one is such a one. It's gonna have a couple of references to a work by an author by the name of DisobedienceWriter, namely in relation the the Potter Grimoire and it's contents. The rest of it...

Don't know when I'll write more... just wanted to get his off my chest.


	2. It Begins

**And Here We Go**

**Summer of 1995**

_Gringotts, Diagon Alley. Grimmauld Place. London, England_

It was the summer after Fourth Year, and Harry Potter had just turned fifteen years old. Having narrowly avoided being sentenced to having his wand snapped for saving himself and his cousin from Dementors, and having arrived back at Grimmauld Place, he had asked Sirius to get him to Gringotts, so he could visit the Potter Family vault. Now that he was of an age to claim be declared the heir to the Family, he'd be able to go through the contents and see if there was anything that could help him in the future. He knew, just knew, that Voldemort would not be able to leave him alone, and that sooner or later the Dark Lord or his minions would attack him, and likely those around him. He needed to get ahead any way he could, especially considering the Ministry seemed to be doing it's best to ignore the dark mutterings that were swelling up.

He had an escort, of course. Molly Weasley and Tonks had taken him, Hermione and Ron to the Bank, and they had all waited outside while he grabbed a few books, some scrolls, a book to place them in and finally the Grimoire. Harry turned to leave the vault before he stopped. He looked over his shoulder at the bracer lying on the pedestal, before grabbing it and the books that lay with it. If it was placed in such a position of pride than it must be important, Harry thought to himself, and it had largely occupied his thoughts since the last time he was here. His last act was to take the ring which would declare him as the heir to the Potter fortune, and place it on his finger. The seal on the ring glowed briefly, the magics that bound it acknowledging him to be of the blood.

After spending a short period of time wandering Diagon Alley, the group had returned to Grimmauld Place. Harry had immediately sequestered himself until dinner with the Grimoire, wanting to know more of his family history. The first spells all seemed to revolve around pottery, oddly enough, although some made reference to what it called war-spells as a way to add more heat. Gradually the spells changed focus again and again, some focusing on stonemasonry, others on leather working and tailoring, some on healing and warding. Fairly constant was a stream of enchanting spells, wound through all the others. It truly was a collection magics from a wide range of people, with a wide range of interest and skills. Some seemed to reference more advanced magics that they had not been able to learn, saying that these spells were poor imitations of what they had seen used.

Harry was both fascinated and frustrated by this. He'd been hoping to find defensive spells, maybe some offensive ones as well. If he couldn't find such magics than the chance of him being able to learn many of the spells of his ancestors remained slim. He flipped to the back of the book, hoping in vain for an index or something of that kind, and then returned to the front of the book. He needed to be able to fight, to survive, so that in time he could pass on this knowledge to his children.

The first spell was different. He noticed that straight away. It looked to be a spell designed to pierce through shields, hand-carried ancient muggle shields, and leave a cut similar to a blade wound. The second would raise a rock-spear from the ground, impaling its target. The book had changed; it was now showing only battle magics – defensive as well as offensive. A shield designed to stop arrows (though it would not stop a scorpion bolt was noted, whatever that was), a spell to raise thin physical barriers that would disrupt most magic without causing too much debris, it was everything he was looking for. Now Harry was looking forward to getting back to school, so he could find a place and begin practising these spells. He put the book in his trunk, and turned towards the family history book.

The first Potter in England had been a member of an Auxilia of the Roman Army. He wrote that his family's people had rebelled against the Romans a century before and been put down most violently, due to the power of their magics, killing all the trained mages and scattering the rest across the Empire as slaves. Some had managed to gain their freedom, and sought out as many of their own people as possible, buying them when they could and bring them to a village in the south western part of what would today be France. They brought with them wives, husbands and children from all over the Empire, anywhere the Romans had been with their people. Having submitted to Roman authority, they were granted land to settle, and so became citizens of the Empire. When asked, they'd sent a small group of men to serve in a campaign against the Britons to the north. The exact dates were unclear to Harry, who'd never studied history that intently.

His ancestor had served well as a soldier, and as a mage, and when his tour in the Auxilia was finished he'd decided to settle down in Britain to remain with the Roman occupiers rather than return to his people's village. He'd been a potter before becoming a soldier, thus he become Varro Potter to those around him. He'd married a local girl, also from a magical family, and settled down to begin his business. Over the years the family had grown, some of his cousins had journeyed north to join him, his own sons and daughters growing up, marrying, and producing children of their own. It was as he approached his later years that a man approached him, a druid, and gave him the bracer which had sat on the pedestal. He was told of a prophecy, that someone in his family, centuries from now, would be able to set it to proper purpose. It had been found while the druids had been digging a sacred circle, and none could divine what it was for, not even the seer who had given the prophecy.

The first Potter had thanked the druid, written down the information, and promptly forgot about it until he lay on his deathbed. He told his eldest son where to find the information, and so the item was examined anew. Over the centuries, the bracer would briefly appear in the journals of assorted Potter family members as they tried to research what it was and what, if anything, it could do. Once Gringotts was established, it was placed in the Family Heirloom vault, and largely ignored again. One of his great-great-grandfathers brothers had briefly tried to research the bracer, and managed to link it to several ancient arcane runic scripts from various places of the world, which had seemed impossible to the man as they were so widely scattered as to be completely out of contact with one another(this being before floo-travel or port-keys. Apparition had been around for centuries, but is not capable of easily travelling those distances, especially over large bodies of water). Those scripts had been linked to a race of mythical creatures, shaped like men but taller and more slender, extremely strong of magic, who were supposed to have lived, and disappeared, over five millennia ago. Little beyond that was known.

Harry absorbed as much of this information as he could before he got called down to dinner, and was feeling greatly cheered up, especially after the events of the last few days. He was even feeling more generous towards Ron and Hermione, enough to smile brightly at them as he sat down rather than his recent grunt at them for not writing more information to him. He'd already forgiven them, of course, but was still feeling slightly miffed about it.

Dinner conversation flowed freely, or as freely as it could in the mildly dismal atmosphere that hung like a shroud over Grimmauld Place at all times. Hermione was asking questions about what he'd been reading, and if there was anything interesting in it, and he was sharing bits and pieces of the information. Ron, of course, was more interested in stuffing his face, but Sirius and Remus seemed to nod along to bits and pieces as he said them, and several other people at the table seemed slightly interested.

Once dinner had been finished(along with an excellent treacle tart for dessert) Harry had retired back to the bedroom to keep reading. The Potter family had continued to grow, spreading throughout the British Isle. They had remained craftsmen and merchants for several centuries, establishing close ties with other magical families. Some went for soldier, for whoever recruited them, until shortly before Hogwarts was founded. At that time the heir of the family had decided he'd follow in the family founder's path, and work as a soldier until it was time for him to take up the reigns. He served with one of the kings of the time, and had done such great service that a minor lordship was bestowed upon him. He trained as a knight, and eventually was granted a barony. Hadrian Potter had retired from service at sixty-two years of age, and had greatly increased the family's influence within the British Isles. When Hogwarts was founded, numerous Potter's had attended, a couple even taught before the Founder's left or died. Over the years his family had produced a couple of Headmasters, a Head of the Wizengamot, a Minister of Magic(after the Ministry was created), numerous department heads, and a wide variety of brilliant workers. However, in the last three centuries, the Potter's had begun to decline in numbers, quite often being targeted by various dark lords, or even just dark families trying to advance themselves over the Potter's. By the time Harry's father James had been born, only him, his father Charlus, his grand-uncle and a few cousins were left. When Harry was born, it was just him and James. Numerous other families had claims to the Potter's, but only he was left from the direct line of the founder of the family, Varro. The heir of the Most Ancient(being able to trace his ancestors' back nearly two millennia in Britain alone) and Most Noble(being of noble descent for nearly a millennia) House of Potter. The last member of such a House.

Harry shook his head. What a heavy concept.

Yawning, he looked at the time piece by his bed. It was nearly midnight, and there were only a few days left until the Hogwarts Express would leave King's Cross, and a new school year would start. Harry packed the Grimoire and the history book back into his trunk, and went to throw the bracer in as well but stopped himself. He looked at the treatise book that accompanied it. Figuring that it would probably make decent enough bedtime reading, he picked them both up and set them on his bed before going to get ready for sleep.

Lying down, he flipped open the book and read the introduction. Flicking through the chapters quickly, he brought the bracer onto his chest in front of the book, and compared some of the runes in the book to those that could be seen faintly etched on the bracer. The runes themselves had never been translated completely, and the book seemed to imply there just wasn't enough information ever recovered to make it likely they could be understood, but Harry could feel a slight tingling sensation as he ran his fingers over them. He shook his head. He was tired, and it was time to go to sleep. He put the book on his bedside table, but stopped himself from putting the bracer down as well. Instead, he cocked his head at it, and then slid it over his wrist and onto his arm. It lay there for a second, and Harry smiled foolishly at himself. Of course nothing was going, to happen, it wasn't like he was under prophecy or any-

His vision went white, and he thought he could hear someone screaming in agony. But who could that be? Had someone attacked the house? Who could get past the Fidelis? Before he could recognize the voice screaming as his own, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived mercifully passed out.

* * *

Okay, a heads up. Don't know when I'll be adding more to this. I have half-written this chapter so many times over the years, it isn't funny. The only reason I pumped it out was because it stopped me stressing about a promotion test I've got upcoming at work. Don't expect more soon. If you think you can use this as a base for a story of your own, and it won't suck gigantic amounts, go ahead- just sling me some credit.


End file.
